Rutgers suffered a tough 13-10 overtime loss to Virginia Tech in the Russell Athletic Bowl on Dec. 28, but that pain was nothing compared to what head coach Kyle Flood was going through.

On a conference call Monday, Flood said that his mother, Louise, who had been battling an illness, died during that game. But Flood refused to say it distracted him from his coaching duties.

“I don’t make any excuses for that. I think there are a lot of players, or a lot of people in our program, who have things going on in their personal lives and certainly my mother is a very important person in my life and somebody that really is a big reason why I am the person I am today,” Flood said, according to NJ.com.

“For me to use that in any way as an excuse, certainly when people you love are in pain it’s on your mind, but I also know the one thing that would have hurt my mother more than anything would be to know that she was keeping me from doing my job.”

It is unclear at what point in the game Flood found out, but Rutgers had a 10-0 lead at halftime before falling apart in the fourth quarter. Virginia Tech drove 62 yards for a field goal and 21 yards for a touchdown on their first two drives of the quarter, before scoring a field goal in overtime. Rutgers had a chance to tie, but missed a field goal on their lone possession of overtime.

Flood, who took over as Rutgers coach after Greg Schiano left for the NFL, led the Scarlet Knights to a 9-4 record. They started out 7-0 ranked as high as No. 15 in the nation before losing three of their final five regular season games, including a home loss to Louisville which would have sent them to the Orange Bowl with a win.